Synapse?

Michal Hruby, one of the main AWN developers has just announced the release of a new application called Synapse (codename "Acetylcholine"). Synapse is a semantic launcher written in Vala that you can use to start applications as well as find and access relevant documents and files by making use of the Zeitgeist engine:

Currently the development was focused primarily around using Zeitgeist for the searches, and there are even plugins that process the output from the Zeitgeist plugin and either try to improve the results, or find similar files on the filesystem (for example the Hybrid search plugin). Still, all of the functionality is based on plugins, so further development can lead anywhere.

Google Earth 6 has been released yesterday (see what's new HERE), however it's quite difficult to install / run it under Linux due to some errors. But here are exact installation instructions which should get Google Earth 6 to install and run in Linux.

1. Ubuntu (and other Debian-based Linux distributions):

The Gnome Shell overview relayout has been merged into the master branch. That means it is now officially part of Gnome Shell. Unfortunately, it doesn't include any elements from the Tiled Viewmockups we've seen a few days ago but it's probably too soon for that.

I couldn't record a video because every time I try to make a Gnome Shell screencast I end up with a 80% blue screen video, but here are some screenshots I took a few minutes ago:

Activities view:

The launcher / application switcher on the left is only available in the Activities view.

Even though there was already work for getting ConnMan in Ubuntu (since 10.10), an update today in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal brings appindicator support for the Network Manager applet (you can see the changelog here). This is very important since Ubuntu will ditch the notification area soon, therefore the connection manager has to use an indicator applet.

But what about ConnMan? Unfortunately I didn't find any info on it, but I'll let you know if something comes up.

Update: here's some info on ConnMan from Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre, who's behind appindicator support in NM:

The long term plan is to switch to Connman and indicator-network, but changes in unity and the desktop make it so that it's really important to get a version of nm-applet that still shows up on the desktop with unity, given that the new compiz-based Unity doesn't currently implement the system tray

CLI Companion is a tool aimed at making the terminal easier to use: it's a GUI that displays a list of commands and an embedded terminal under it. The application comes with a list of commonly used commands by default, each having a short description and if you want to find out more about a certain command, simply right click it and select "Help". This will display the "man" (manual) for the selected command. But CLI Companion can help advanced users too as you can use it to store long commands which you can then easily find using the search feature.

Today I've released a new version which fixes some bugs and brings Linux Mint support (thanks to Matthew Markell for the help!) for all the Y PPA Manager tools.

If you didn't try Y PPA Manager yet, here is a video I've recorded, demoing the PPA search feature (which can list the packages - including their versions in a PPA, download .debs from a PPA and so on):

Unity (which now shows up as a plugin in CompizConfig Settings Manager) has finally been made default in Ubuntu (desktop) 11.04 Natty Narwhal yesterday, as you can see in the Ubuntu meta changelog. That means that if you download the latest Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal daily build and boot from it, you should get Unity without having to install / enable anything. The same changelog mentions that Screen has been removed from the desktop version.

But back to Unity: there's not much that works right now, but here is a video I've recorded with the latest Unity in Ubuntu 11.04 Natthy Narwhal (as of today):

Touchpad Indicator is a very simple indicator created by Lorenzo Carbonell (the Picapy developer), which as the name suggests, is designed to allow you to easily enable / disable your laptop or netbook touchpad.

Dropbox Share now automatically adds emblems to the files you've shared (even though these files are not in your Dropbox folder) and removes them when you unshare the files. Please note that you need to unshare the files via the Dropbox Unshare script (it's also included in Dropbox Share package - all you have to do is select the files you want to unshare, right click them and under "Scripts" you'll find both "Dropbox Share" and "Dropbox Unshare") or else the emblems won't be removed!

If you're looking for an easy way to manage your PicasaWeb images, try Picapy, an application to mass upload, delete or get the URL of your PicasaWeb pictures - nothing fancy, but it's lightweight and very easy to use.

Foobnix, a very interesting music player we wrote about a while back (check out that post for a complete review) has been updated to version 0.2.2 and also it now comes with an Ubuntu PPA.

Since our last Foobnix post, there have been many changes to this Linux music player: most parts have been re-written, the interface has been revamped - the info panel being a lot more clear and easy to use now, global hotkeys, proxy support, configurable notification area icon, 100 new radio stations have been added and many other changes.

The script was initially in Spanish, but I've translated it into English and I've also corrected 3 small errors which caused the script not to work.

To see that if you follow the exact instructions, everything works and you won't get any error when opening new terminals, I've recorded a video showing how I've ran the script on my netbook (using Ubuntu 10.04):

According to Ostatic, Mark Shuttleworth, said that Ubuntu will likely be moving from its current six-month release schedule to daily updates which would make Ubuntu a rolling-release Linux distribution.

A while back we've told you about an interesting Unity mockup for managing multiple workspaces that automatically creates the workspaces and always keeps an empty workspace so you don't have to create the workspaces yourself (and you always have the number of workspaces that you actually need).

Unfortunately, Mark Shuttleworth didn't like the idea (at least the way it was described back then) so it seems like we won't have this in Unity. But on the other hand, it looks like we'll have it in Gnome Shell (not exactly the same, but the same concept is being used). Read on!

A while back I wrote a Nautilus script for easily sharing any file or folder using Dropbox, via right click. But scripts get lost, especially since most people do a clean Ubuntu install every 6 months. Also, I guess it's easier to simply install it from a PPA / .deb then having to manually install the dependencies and moving the script to the right folder and so on. For this reason, I've packaged my Dropbox Share script in a .deb and uploaded it to the main WebUpd8 PPA.

A little recap on what Dropbox Share does: using it, you can right click any file or folder (!) on your computer and share it via Dropbox. The script creates a link to the file / folder you want to share, in your Dropbox Public folder and automatically copies the link(s) to the clipboard so you can paste it in an email, IM window and so on.

Why using this script is better then copying some files in your Public Dropbox folder:

because the script uses symbolic links, the files aren't actually copied to your Dropbox public folder, so they won't take the double amount of space

all the links are automatically copied to the clipboard

you can even share folders, even though Dropbox doesn't allow this by default (the shared folder will have an "index.html" file and thus opening its link in a web browser, it can be easily accessed via a web browser)

A new Gnome Shell mockup shows how the old Gnome Shell behavior (which is actually still the current Gnome Shell behavior) and the new Overview-Layout Gnome Shell branch can work together, bringing both innovation and usability (called "Tiled view"):

In my search for a clean Desktop (because I got tired of cleaning it manually), I came across "Directory cleaner and files organizer", a script (with Zenity for a GUI) that automatically cleans any directory (and thus the Desktop folder) by moving the files to various folders such as all the pictures into ~/Pictures, the archives into ~/Archives, documents into ~/Documents and so on.

The script recognizes more than 470 extensions and the directories where it moves the files can be customized in the settings. Also, I'm using it for organizing my Desktop but you can use it for any other folder such as the ~/Downloads folder and so on.

Directory cleaner and files organizer has 2 options for cleaning: "Start-Cleaning" which moves all the files in the selected directory to the directories you've set in its settings, overwriting any existing files, and "Advanced-Cleaning" which is a smart way of moving the files:

Even though the Mozilla developers initially said they wouldn't do it, here it is: Firefox 4.0 (nightly build) finally gets an unified menu button. But not the way it's integrated in Windows (in the titlebar), but next to the tabs.

With the release of version 2.0, Grub Customizer becomes the most complete GRUB 2 graphical configuration tool.

Grub Customizer - a new graphical GRUB 2 and BURG settings manager -, 2.0 has been released today with a lot of enhancements: you can now select the default boot entry, change the menu visibility and timeout, set kernel parameters, disable recovery entries and change screen resolution (GFX_MODE) - all by using Grub Customizer.

Pino would have probably gotten a lot more votes if it worked with OAuth (even though it does work without OAuth with a trick, but most people probably don't know that). Either way, it's amazing how an application (Hotot) which until 2 months ago nobody knew it exists now takes the first spot of the Best Linux Twitter Client poll.

If you have an idea for a poll we didn't have on WebUpd8, let us know in the comments!

Because we got a lot of comments from people not understanding what Window Applets does, here's a short description (and a new screenshot - hopefully it's clear now):

You can set Window applets to control only maximized windows (but Window Applets can control non-maximized windows too) and remove the maximized windows titlebar, thus gaining some extra vertical space, but still see the window title and control the windows using the Window Applets. Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook edition has something similar by default, but what's so great about Window Applets is that the Window Title and Window Buttons are 2 separate applets so you can place each wherever you want (like for instance: the Window Title in the middle of the panel and Window Buttons on the right, after the Session Indicator applet).

Also, unlike the Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition applet, "Window Applets" supports themes for the buttons on the panel - and comes with a lot of themes by default, as well as many other customizations.

But now you can use MintMenu in AWN, thanks to Neelance who maintains a PPA for MintMenu AWN applet which you can install (Ubuntu Lucid and Maverick; should work in Linux Mint) using the following commands:

But that's not all. The latest Faenza 0.8 also brings reworked icons for Gwibber, Firefox, Chromium and Google Chrome, a whole new set of emblems and weather icons and new monochromatic icons for applications.

Phoronix recently published an article regarding a ~200 lines Linux Kernel patch that improves responsiveness under system strain. Well, Lennart Poettering, a RedHat developer replied to Linus Torvalds on a maling list with an alternative to this patch that does the same thing yet all you have to do is run 2 commands and paste 4 lines in your ~/.bashrc file. I know it sounds unbelievable, but apparently someone even ran some tests which prove that Lennart's solution works. Read on!

Because this was very requested, today I've uploaded a patch Mint Menu in our MintMenu PPA, which includes a link to the Ubuntu Software Center.

In case you don't know, we maintain a PPA for easily installing MintMenu in Ubuntu. However, the original MintMenu does not include a link to the Ubuntu Software Center (I've named it "Software Center" so the name doesn't get truncated) so the only way to launch USC when using MintMenu was from the command line. But this changes with the patch today (nothing major, just changed 2 lines of code) - as you can see in the screenshot, you can launch Ubuntu Software Center directly from the MintMenu.

I also took this opportunity to upload MintMenu packages for Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal so if you're using Natty already, you can already use MintMenu (but I haven't tested it on Natty yet).

If you had trouble installing the Noflipqlo screensaver or simply didn't want to go through so many steps to install a screensaver, you can try QMLSaver. It's not exactly the same thing, but the animation is still pretty nice as you can see in the video below:

Having so many posts on "global menus", you probably know by now what a "global menu" is. If not, take a look at the above screenshot.

Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition comes with a global menu (not Gnome2 Globalmenu but its own "global menu") which works with some Qt applications as opposed to Gnome2 Globalmenu, however Gnome2 Globalmenu is still better for GTK applications (for now anyway) as it allows far more customizations then the Ubuntu global menu. But this is not a post on pros and cons for these 2 applications but about installing Gnome2 Global menu in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.

You could already install Gnome2 Globalmenu in Ubuntu 10.10 but you had to manually download and install 4-5 .deb files which is not exactly user friendly. Besides, a new version was released a couple of days ago and it's not available in the Gnome2 Globalmenu PPA - reason for which I've decided to upload this new version (0.7.10 - unfortunately I didn't find any changelog for this version and also I don't see any visible new features) to the WebUpd8 PPA.

Y PPA Manager is a project I've been working on for a couple of weeks for easily managing and finding Launchpad PPAs in Ubuntu. Y PPA Manager is a tool for easily managing Launchpad PPAs that uses YAD for a graphical user interface (a Zenity fork which comes with a lot of improvements) and comes as a .deb and with a Launchpad PPA for easy updates. Please note that this is a pre-alpha release as I'm the only one who's ever used Y PPA Manager so far.

Y PPA Manager features (in this first release):

Add PPA

Delete PPA - displays all the enabled PPAs (disabled PPAs will not be listed) and you can delete any PPA from that list

Purge PPA - uses the "ppa-purge" tool to downgrade the packages in the selected PPA to the version in the official Ubuntu repositories and disables that PPA

List packages in a PPA enabled on your computer - lists all the packages that are available for your Ubuntu version in the selected PPA (only PPAs that you have added to your system and are enabled will show up here)

Search in all Launchpad PPAs - will perform a search in all the Launchpad PPAs for the package you enter in the search form. The search uses the Launchpad PPA search so it may return empty PPAs if the PPAs have a description that matches your search, or a PPA with packages for a different Ubuntu version then your current Ubuntu version (or the Ubuntu version you've set Y PPA Manager to search for - see info regarding the settings below). You will be able to perform the following operations on a PPA: add it, list all the packages in that PPA for your Ubuntu version (or the Ubuntu version you've set Y PPA Manager to search for in the settings) - including the package versions, download selected packages from a PPA, copy PPA link (so you can then paste it in a web browser).

Settings - there is no GUI option for this yet. But you can modify a few settings by editing the /etc/y-ppa-manager.conf file (you'll find info on the possible settings inside that file). Options include: setting the Ubuntu version for the "Search all Launchpad PPAs" feature, setting the PPA-Purge behavior (automatic - the user will not be prompted; manual: a terminal window will open asking the user what to do from the available list of options in aptitude) and setting the PPA .deb download path.

VLC 1.1.5 has been released yesterday, introducing some small features and bug fixes.

One of the most interesting new features in VLC 1.1.5 is the addition of 1000 Web-shows listing integrated inside VLC's playlist, provided by Channels.com. These can be accessed by going to View > Playlist > Internet:

Granola is an application to improve your netbook / laptop battery life but can be used on your PC too and "make your PC environmentally friendly".

Granola runs in the background but if you install the GUI, you'll be able to see some statistics such as how much energy, money and CO2 you'll be saving by running Granola on your computer as well as the overall savings by all Granola users.

The energy saving depends on your computer activity: if you mostly surf the Internet, the Granola wiki states that you will probably save around 30% energy. If you are playing games without a pretty new graphics card, the savings are less: around 10%.

Fuduntu is a Fedora 14 remix (remaster) designed especially for Asus Eee (but you can of course use it on other netbooks and any laptop/desktop computer) and comes with some interesting performance tweaks by default. It was created by Fewt, the Jupiter (an hardware and power management applet for netbooks and Laptops) developer.

YaRock is a new Qt4 music player designed to provide a nice overview of your music by allowing you to browse your music collection based on the album cover art. And this isn't just about the visuals because YaRock allows you to browse your music in such a way (multiple ways actually) that you won't need to use the search feature anymore (though it has that too).

A new YaRock version (0.0.35) has been released, adding some of the features I was suggesting it should add in our previous YaRock post, like automatic cover art fetching, support to load/save playlist (m3u, pls, xspf) and a new playlist browser as well as other features such as:

Starting yesterday, the Compiz based Unity is available in a PPA (ppa:unity/ppa) for Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal. Unity can be enabled on the Desktop version (you don't have to login to the Ubuntu Netbook Edition) from the CompizConfig Settings Manager (Unity is a Compiz plugin):

Burg Manager is an application to easily install Burg (along with the default Burg themes and a Burg emulator) and change most of the Burg settings such as the timeout, download and install new themes, remove Burg and restore Grub 2, set the default operating system and many advanced options.

Burg Manager 1.0 has been released today, the major highlights of this release being an option to add an ISO to the BURG menu (and thus boot an ISO - however this doesn't seem to work right now -> see the comments), an option to restore BURG into MBR after a Kernel upgrade and an option to remove old kernels and its menu entries.

Because there are many Twitter clients out there, we asked you to nominate the best Twitter client in a comment on a post last week. Today, you all get to vote for the best Linux Twitter client based on your nominations (top 5 nominations). So, which of the following is the best Linux Twitter client?

Meta Backup is a script that creates a meta .deb package which depends on all the applications you've installed on your computer along with all the PPAs- you can then use this .deb to install everything from your computer on other computers. Of course, your settings will not be saved in the .deb so it should not be used as a backup solution, but only as an easy way to get a similar setup on multiple computers.

Those of you who follow WebUpd8 on Twitter or Facebook saw a teaser about this yesterday. Well, after some further testing it seems everything works, so here it is!

Compiz 0.9.2.1 was uploaded to the official Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal repositories yesterday and to a PPA. I was hoping we'll also get a PPA with Ubuntu 10.10 packages but only part of the packages have been uploaded to that PPA (and they don't work even if you install the rest of the Compiz dependencies). But I though I'd copy the Natty packages in a PPA for Maverick and give it a try and I was surprised to see... it actually works.

However, most part of the plugins are not available yet so using the PPA I've set up (which is a temporarely PPA by the way - until Compiz 0.9.2 (or newer) packages will be uploaded to an official PPA) you'll only get the "main" (compiz-fusion-plugins-main) plugins. Also, Emerald won't work.

You probably remember Orta, a new gorgeous theme we posted about a while back. Initially, Orta used the Elementary theme panel and Metacity theme but an update today (version 0.75) finally brings an original Metacity, 2 panel styles (dark and light) as well as a configuration tool you can use to tweak various parts of the theme such as the Nautilus style (Elementary or default), 3 scrollbar styles, various fixes, tab styles and more.

Compiz 0.8.x has some very cool plugins which are marked as "experimental" and thus are not available in the Ubuntu repositories. Johnnyg posted instructions about installing these plugins @ Gnome Look - I gave it a try and everything seems to be working (though I've only tested 3-4 plugins so far).

Here's a very useful feature that has been recently added to the Chrome/ium dev channel builds: an option you can use to set the plugins to "Click to play" (which is basically like a built-in Flashblock for Chrome). Using this option, Flash (and other plugins) content will never load until you click it.

2ClickUpdate is a front-end for system updates that checks for and installs updates, removes unnecessary files and cleans up after installing the updates. It works on any Debian/Ubuntu based Linux distribution.

2ClickUpdate is a shell script with a GUI provided by Zenity that uses axel (similar to apt-fast) for handling the downloads (so the downloads are a lot faster then regular updates) and NotifyOSD notifications.

Your favourite music player is not supported by the new Ubuntu 10.10 sound menu or not using Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat yet? Then try Panflute, a gnome Panel applet and daemon which can control whatever music player is currently running. It can play/pause/stop, display/rate songs, display artist/song title, song change notifications and more. Each of these can be removed from Panflute so you can show only the song info or controls that you want.

The latest Panflute0.7 adds support for music players such as Clementine, Decibel, Pithos, and Qmmp along the already supported Amarok, Rhythmbox, Guayadeque, Audacious, Banshee, Exaile, Listen, MOC, Muine, Quod Libet, Songbird and VLC.

Nautilus Easy Union is a Nautilus extension (comes as a stand-alone application too, but it requires Nautilus anyway) that allows you to create a "union point" which is basically a folder that displays the contents of other (multiple) directories. You can use it for easily accessing all your pictures, music, videos or other files from a single location.

To understand better what Nautilus Easy Union does, here's an example: suppose you keep your videos in multiple folders like: /videos /home/your_username/videos and /sdb3/videos. Using Nautilus Easy Union, you can create a folder that lists the contents of all these 3 folders. This new folder will display all the files in these 3 directories. You can also write to that folder - Nautilus Easy Union has an option which allows you to select the actual "real" folder where the files will be written.

Here's a video I've just recorded demoing how Nautilus Easy Union works:

An update to the Avant Window Navigator trunk PPA from a few days ago brought per dock/panel Intellihide to AWN (taskmanager).

Intellihide causes the dock to autohide itself when a window is obscuring it/maximized and be visible while nothing is in the way. This means you can utilize all of your available screen space when you need it and not have to mouse to the screen edge when you don't need all of the screen space.

Battery Status is a GNOME panel applet that shows information about laptop battery state - but has a lot of extra features compared to GNOME's Power Manager icon. Battery Status applet features a battery status dialog, power statistics, CPU frequency scaling and power management preferences.

Good news for Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat users: with a bit of a delay - but it's better late then never -, the Battery Status PPA has been updated with Ubuntu 10.10 packages.

The beautiful Divergence IV: A New Hope theme (which we've previously covered HERE) got a big update today. The theme now comes with a script that allows you to choose from 3 Nautilus styles, 3 panel styles and 4 menu styles.

The script only tweaks the styles mentioned above and installs the Metacity theme, however the package comes with many other goodies: 5 amazing Emerald themes, an AWN Lucido theme and even a CoverGloobus theme.